Anniversary catalogue

We have now been working for a year from our new Hordern House headquarters, and with our first major printed catalogue of the year have taken a moment to reflect on our antiquarian journey begun in 1985.

Moving into this intimate warehouse space in Sydney’s Surry Hills was a bold move for our company that had for thirty-two years been run from a traditional colonial house in Victoria St., Potts Point. In so doing, we were able to introduce ways of working that better matched the vibrant, innovative changes that mark today’s fine art culture. Whilst we work with the historically important past, our move to Surry Hills encapsulates 21st-century business philosophy.

Continuing, as we do, to specialise in rare and important original materials relating to Australia and the Pacific over the period of European discovery, exploration and settlement, this catalogue embraces material from the earliest European conception of a southern land to the voyages of Cook, Flinders, La Perouse and Freycinet. Cook’s contribution is traced in a matched pair of beautiful library globes (item 7). Australia as an emerging geo-political centre is marked with the inclusion of a pair of remarkable paintings (see item 36) of Sir George Seymour and his ship Collingwood.